Using fiber is a difficult expense for true audiophiles. The fibers typically used can contain a lot of impurities which distorts the color of the light signal, introducing noise into your audio. This is why when using fiber for audio, true audiophiles only use diamond fibers extruded through Emerald dies enchanted by a wizard after he puts on his robe and hat.

I have seen qualitative evidence that they at least look as far as a year. I would give a hand wavey estimate of 70% quarterly 30% annual. I make this assertion based on the ability to budget for capital equipment and longer term development projects.

That part isn't stupid. What is stupid is deducing that the solution involves creating new incentives for young women to go into computer science. It's a far deeper cultural phenomenon*. People don't like to admit this though because addressing deep seeded cultural phenomena require generations to change. That's no good for politicians who can't see any further than the next election cycle or executives who can't even see further than the next annual earnings report.


* Note I use the word "phenomenon" and not "problem". Whether or not any cultural phenomenon is a problem is besides the point.

There are lies, damn lies, and then statistics. This is a classic example of the last item in that list.

Given how much of a dick Jobs was, I'm not sure that he's ever been truely happy. That kind of dickishness comes from a place of insecurity.

Unfortunately that same diploma is becoming increasingly essential for any employment all the way down to gas station attendant. If I had kids I would highly encourage them to find a trade and go to a trade school. Find a job that pays just well enough to do the things you actually want to do while giving you enough free time to do them.

Most teachers I have had substantial interaction with do not repeat the same thing over and over every year. Each time they teach a class, their presentation becomes more refined. In addition, they answer questions and clarify concepts on the fly at the very moment that the questions and content are at the front of the student's attention. That has a substantial value over a video lecture or reading books.

The point is that lack of money is not the problem. Priority of the school board and administration maybe, but not lack of money. At least in many cases. Every school district is a bit different.

The question is, are you going to need to spend another hour on the phone in a year threatening to cancel your service when your rate goes up $8 a month just so that they keep you at $90 a month? Even when clearly they were making enough money at that rate if they were willing to change it back?

I don't see this being a reason given the vast sum of money being spent on technology for the classroom.

To be fair, it would be next to impossible to have a free market on cable TV. Distribution is the first big problem that is frequently discussed here. I don't want a ton of cable companies running their lines in front of my house. One I'd more than enough. Also, there is likely a very big cost of operation barrier since every new competitor needs to drop a huge investment in infrastructure to grab a fraction of the already saturated market. Sure there are cases where governments have explicitly stopped local governments from installing a competing service, but this is not common.

But the bigger problem now is the whole industry model. No ala cart pricing, and limited streaming. This spits in the face of market realities. I can't stomach paying for sports channels I will never watch and consider blocking in my household. Not to mention all the other trash channels I never watch. I am happy to pay a premium for only the channels I want, but this is not an option. On top of that, I want to watch what I want to watch when I want to watch it. This is why I ditched cable for a combination of roku, Amazon Prime, and Netflix. I am happy to pay for the shows I want to watch on Amazon Prime. I watch more TV than ever before and I pay a lot less for it.

For a service that I used only a handful of times a week, the straw the brolemthe camel's back for me was the automatic rate increase every year until you call to complain. That's just abusive and degrading. I don't want to haggle for my service. Offer me a price that is fair to both of us and make it the same for all customers with the same service. Allowing me to haggle just means you don't value my time.

How so? A net loss to the consumer sure. But to society? That's a stretch. You would need to assess the supplier chain to find out where all of that money ends up to make that determination. You can bet if you buy foreign made panels, almost all of that money is leaving society. If you're paying a premium for locally made panels, I would at least be willing to take the gamble that the majority of that money stays within our society.

Yeah, just look at all those technicians sitting around in a back room. I think you're mistaking the unibody assemby as representing the assembly of the entire car. It's standard for that to be mostly automated because of all the welding. But after it's painted, assembly is still mostly a well choreographed manual exercise. It just doesn't look as sexy on TV because people don't appreciate the organizational precision involved.

More like we're just at the end of our rope. At some point, when your neighbor won't stop peaking in your house, you either completely wall yourself off from the world or you say screw it and walk around in your skivvies all day and say 'enjoy the show'. At least in the later you don't have to lose out.